As news of the rapid rise in deaths due to the coronavirus first trickled into the U.S. just after the Lunar New Year, concern mounted with the possible looming threat of a "China virus" or the "Wuhan virus." The World Health Organization (WHO) soon released updated information about the disease with a new name, coronavirus, which was assigned according to its crown-like shape, and then renamed it COVID-19 in February, as a means to avoid association to any "geographical location, an animal,

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... ] an individual or group of people" as per WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus's explanation in a media briefing (WHO 2020). Despite these efforts to remove a sense of associated threat between the virus and the Chinese people, President Donald Trump's tweet on March 16, 2020 revived the usage of incriminating language that points blame to the Chinese people while simultaneously striking a border between the "we" of Americans and the Chinese.